


Mercy

by padfootfreak14



Category: Jurassic Park - All Media Types, Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23684488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/padfootfreak14/pseuds/padfootfreak14
Summary: Owen and reader finding Echo alive and badly burned and having to deal with if it's worth trying to save her or kinder to euthanize her. Tons of angst and hopefully a happy ending???
Relationships: Owen Grady/Reader
Kudos: 14





	Mercy

Despite everything that had happened, everything that InGen had caused with their greed and their plans and their ambition, neither of you could just walk away. No sooner than teams were assembled to go back in and try to contain the escaped animals you and Owen were heading right back with them. You both needed to see things done right and you both knew what would probably happen if they tried to capture Blue without Owen. 

You weren’t sure that either of you could take losing her too, not after what happened to Charlie, not after Echo. Delta no one could be sure about, she hadn’t rejoined Blue but it wasn’t impossible that she’d simply been unconscious as her sister had been and perhaps by some miracle Blue wasn’t all by herself trying to survive. You didn’t have much hope for it and neither did Owen but you were both finding it hard to find hope for much anymore.

You had been about as close to a hopeless wreck as possible when you met Owen. You had already gone through two packs of raptors, six stillborn hatchlings and seven workers most of whom ended up dead because god forbid they listen to a woman when she tells them to stay away from the volatile animals. The rest of them learned that it didn’t matter if they were full grown or only a month old they were more than lethal. You had been wary at the aspect of someone else being brought on to try and make progress without losing another pack. You had seen people come and go, it never worked out but you were desperate and InGen was showing no signs of giving up the endeavor. Each pack, each lost raptor had been breaking you a little more. Being there for them to hatch, either finding out that they were already dead or hoping that they survived infancy. All the ones that did either killed each other or had to be killed by the containment team and every single one broke your heart to lose.

Owen seemed to look right in to your soul when you met, seemed to see the agony that you were in. You told him over drinks that this was never going to work, told him how many failures the program had already suffered, told him that it didn’t seem that InGen was ever going to give up. You told him that you didn’t think you could take losing another pack. He tried to distract you, told you about his work in the Navy and how he’d ended up on Isla Nublar. You were immediately taken with him even before the tequila kicked in. He had such a warmth to him, a caring for everything around him that no one else here really seemed to have. You were so sure it would go away, that history would repeat himself and he’d end up broken over losing more raptors like you had ended up. For years he’d still tease you about how you went to kiss him and ended up leaning over a trash can instead as he held your hair back. You woke up the next morning feeling like you’d been run over and sure you’d done something stupid, say like waking up in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar bed. Painkillers and water sat next to the bed with a pair of sunglasses. You weren’t sure where your shirt and pants were but you had the vague recollection of more vomit that you considered possible and whoever’s shirt you were wearing was long enough to almost make you feel decent. But you were alone under the blanket, a bleary look around the room found Owen asleep on the couch.

The two of you spent the rest of that day together. InGen had wanted the two of you to immediately start the process of a new pack, Owen called and told them he thought it was better the two of you get to know each other and that you have the time to brief him on what had gone wrong and right with previous attempts. You’d of course told him almost all of that the night before, but they didn’t know that any more than they knew that you spent the first half of the day on your knees in Owen’s bathroom as he held your hair back. The second half of the day was spent in his bed sipping down glasses of water to rehydrate and forcing yourself to eat when he brought you food. You didn’t mind the second half as much, resting your head on Owen’s shoulder when he sat next to you. He made you feel so relaxed that you couldn’t be bothered to be embarrassed when he recounted the previous night’s events to you, how you’d insisted you handled tequila just fine, that you went in for a kiss and barely made it to a trash can, making a mess of your clothes. You were silently grateful to him for taking care of you, for staying with you to make sure you were okay, for thinking to put you at least in one of his shirts so you didn’t wake up half naked and hungover to boot. You wouldn’t even have cared if he slept in his own bed with you, but he’d put you to bed and slept on the couch. You thanked him with a kiss and asked him to stay when you started falling asleep that night. You woke up more at peace than you’d felt in months.

Despite the peace that Owen brought you, the fear crept back in when it was time for the new pack to hatch. They’d gone smaller this time, starting with only four eggs and you’d tried desperately to maintain the same calm hopefulness that Owen had. Blue had been the first to hatch and from her first moments she had Owen wrapped around her finger and completely taken with her. Delta had been after her and you had just been glad for two surviving eggs. The time it took for Echo to hatch had everyone wondering if the last two eggs would produce stillborns but then she appeared, fixing her eyes on you before she ever paid Owen or her sisters any mind. Charlie had been a worry from the start, taking the longest to hatch and drawing blood as soon as she did. If she had been any bigger she might’ve taken a nice chunk out of your finger but she was just so beautiful, so perfect. If Blue had Owen absolutely star struck over her, Charlie and Echo had done the same to you. The youngest two were more carefully monitored, they were the two you always feared would die before they ever grew up but they made it. Your little pack, the four angels Owen had named after his beloved dolphins.

You often contribute the success of this pack to having Owen. He gave you back your hope for this working but he also gave the girls a stable hierarchy. In the wild it wouldn’t have been a single alpha running the pack, it would’ve been two, the strong mated pair. It was something you had never been able to provide your packs before and something you had never considered would be so important. Aside from the one incident between Blue and Echo the girls didn’t fight with each other like the other packs had. The issues of dead workers ended with Owen, the strength of his presence kept everyone in line with the exception of a few injuries here and there. You loved them ferociously, Owen and your girls and you always thought that they loved you the same. They were protective of you, protective of Owen. They got agitated if someone was crossing boundaries or perceived as a threat to the pack as a whole. When Owen had Barry brought in he didn’t mesh in with the pack quite as smoothly but still far better than you could have hoped and it gave someone for Delta to focus her attention on when Blue monopolized Owen and you were most often focused on Charlie and Echo.

Your mistake had been letting your guard down, letting yourself get so wrapped up in how happy you were with Owen, in how much progress it seemed like you were making with the girls. Everything had been going so well. Like many things with Owen you had been skeptical of his methods but they had been working. He’d needed to explain to you that the point of the clicker he used wasn’t like you’d use it for a dog, he’d done the same thing with the dolphins because the noise was more familiar to them and it was the same concept with the dolphins. You also thought it might have a little to do with Owen’s seeming inability to really whistle or make similar noises with his mouth but if the clicker kept their attention then you were going to keep letting him use it. Keeping their attention had been key early on, if you didn’t have their attention you couldn’t try and give them commands. In the long run you weren’t sure that the girls taking commands ended up being a good thing or not.

There had never been a point that you enjoyed being anywhere near Hoskins. When it was just you he was on your ass and making underhanded remarks about your job performance while in the same breath hitting on you. After Owen it was a lot easier to avoid Hoskins all together and when you couldn’t Owen was always quick to find a way to get him to back off. It never helped that Hoskins seemed of the mindset that since Owen had taken over as the pack alpha, you were completely redundant. It just showed that he paid no attention to the reports but he had no problem getting on everyone’s ass when they stopped coming in. That was Hoskins for you, saw what he wanted, heard what he wanted and understood nothing. If he did he’d know that the pack dynamic relied on the leadership as it was, it relied on trust and respect and the powers was always held by the girls. You and Owen couldn’t just magically make them listen, one day they would and the next day they wouldn’t. His complete lack of respect for the pack and for its alphas was exactly why the girls absolutely hated him.

It had been a reasonably typical day; get up in the morning, go to work, try and get the girls to not eat the pig. For once the day hadn’t continued with the girls get the pig and so much for that. They ran through the drill perfectly, hunted and herded the pig back to the main point of the enclosure and they let it escape through its hatch. It was the result that you had only ever dreamed would happen, the first time that any of your packs had gotten this far. And then Hoskins had to ruin everyone’s excitement with his bullshit and make you want to push him in to the paddock. The first real success in the entire program and he wanted to just set them loose and see what that could do, you’d been sorely tempted to tell him that the first thing they would do is rip him to pieces. The entire day was just downhill from there.

Being incredibly impressed aside, Owen’s stunt in the paddock was beyond incredibly stupid. You were less surprised that Blue didn’t take a piece of out him but he was lucky that Charlie didn’t at the very least and you told him as much on the ride home. You wanted desperately to scream at him for being so stupid but there was still that part of you that was absolutely elated at the progress the girls had made regardless of anything else. You were both glad to be home, you were glad to be able to leap in to Owen’s arms and express your excitement over the girls without prying eyes and comments, to be able to express how badly he’d scared you. It was too close a call for you, it had been a long time since you’d confessed to Owen that you didn’t think you could make it through losing another pack but this had made you realize that you knew without a doubt you couldn’t make it through losing him. Owen as always tried to break your strange mood by taking you inside. You could admit his method certainly put you both in a much better mood and maybe if he’d have stayed home instead of going with Claire to take a look at the new exhibit it would’ve stayed that way.

You didn’t separate from Owen again after he called you with instructions of where to come get him. You wanted to be absolutely livid with Claire over the whole thing but you knew how things could end up when you weren’t given all the information you needed, especially when you were expected to keep it together and handle the situation, so you helped. For your efforts you were chased, chased some more, attacked by more dinosaurs and faced with something you couldn’t stop. You and Owen both knew that using the raptors was never going to work but there was no way you could stop it and going along with it was the only possible way to prevent the girls from killing anything that crossed their path. A better way to say that would’ve been that it was the only way to try and prevent it because it did anyway. You didn’t realize what had happened at the time, only that your girls had turned on you and they were now part of the target.

You knew deep down there wasn't anything you could’ve done but it still felt like pieces of your entire being were being wrenched from your body and nothing would ever stop you from blaming Hoskins for it. Nothing could have prepared you for it, for seeing Charlie and seeing the recognition in her eyes as she looked at you. It made you question what you thought had happened with the girls turning on you and Owen and in a moment there was a light and a force throwing you back and she was gone. You couldn’t erase that moment any more than Owen could erase you screaming for Charlie as he drug you from the ground and had to pull you along to force you to keep running with him.

You were proud of Delta, more than you should’ve been but given the situation. You had been blaming Hoskins for costing you Charlie but he was to blame for all of it and you couldn’t even be bothered that Delta took care of him. It wasn’t until you ended up back outside and surrounded by the three raptors that it really dawned on you. Raptors didn’t just change their loyalty to whoever was stronger, at least not without destroying any previous leader, but they did play games. They had teamed up with Indominus to fit their needs, to eliminate the threat to their pack but now the problem wasn’t Hoskins and InGen, the problem was having to deal with the new threat and none of you were strong enough to do it. Seeing Blue thrown like she was nothing more than a rag doll solidified that for you and you knew how this would end. The girls would defend you like you always knew they would and Indominus would kill them just like it had just done to Blue, just like it had done to everything else it came across, and then it would kill all of you. If that was the case then it was only a matter of time before how much it killed you to lose any parts of your pack just didn’t matter anymore.

It still mattered, it still tore away another piece of you watching another one of your girls die trying to protect you and it hurt worse than losing Charlie. Surely at least Charlie had gone quickly, never even realized what hit her, but god Echo. It was cruel of whatever higher power there may be to make her suffer like that, to make you suffer like that and watch her burn before she disappeared from sight. If there was mercy in the world Delta went as quickly as Blue and Charlie but you couldn’t watch any more. With girls out of the way and Owen out of the already useless bullets there was nothing else to keep Indominus from going for its next snack, nothing except Claire’s quick thinking and Rexy’s diversion that was at least enough to get you away from Indominus. Then like a miracle Blue was there and almost as suddenly and dramatically as this all had started it was over.

It seemed cruel to have to leave Blue after everything she’d done for the two of you, to have to leave her all alone but there was no choice. You made it as far as the helicopter before you just shut down. It felt like the weight of everything was crushing you and you couldn’t find the strength to do anything but force your body to move when you needed to. Owen was sure he’d have to carry you from the helicopter. You faked happiness to see Claire’s nephews reunited with their parents but all you could feel was the heart wrenching agony of knowing that someone else’s greed and desire for power had robbed you of your girls. That it had gotten people killed, taken you from your home and destroyed everything beautiful the park had stood for.

The dam finally broke when you reached the hotel room you were being put up in until things could be sorted out. It was something about the confined silence, about being in this sterile room with Owen that was so far away from the simplicity the two of you had put together on the island. There was nothing left to distract either of you from the crippling sense of loss that washed over you. Even in his own grief Owen was there for you, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you against him as you sobbed. You could feel his own tears on your neck, he held you as much for your comfort as his own. A part of you felt like you should be grateful to have walked away with this much, you had started with nothing before Owen came to the island and you may have lost your pack but you still had your life and you still had Owen.

You both knew that was all you had left, each other. A hot shower did a small bit to calm you both, washing away the grime from the day and easing some of the aches in your muscles. It felt almost an inappropriate time when he pressed you against the wall of the shower, trailing kisses along your neck. It was more irrational to think that you should both shut down and lock yourselves in grief instead of appreciating what you had been left with. You both needed this, needed to physically feel that the other was still there, feel every part of them and know that it wasn’t an illusion. Owen was as desperate as you were, you could feel it in the way he moved, the way he kept you pressed against the mattress so there couldn’t be even an inch separating the two of you. You feel asleep much the same way, wrapped up in each other as if letting go meant the other would be gone.

It had been the knocking that had woken you both up, hearing Claire call through the door that she’d left your freshly cleaned clothes outside the door and to get dressed because she needed to speak to you both. That conversation was all it took to have you both back on the island. Tricky legal loopholes and manipulating public opinion could save the park but first you and Owen had your girl to save. The first team had started by flying over and seeing if the paddocks for the more dangerous dinosaurs needed fixed but thankfully Rexy’s paddock and the raptors were still unharmed. Team one was also sent in on standby to be in charge of capturing Rexy just as soon as you and Owen were there to make sure that Blue wouldn’t be an issue.

They didn't have long to wait and while the team accompanying the two of you doubted Blue could be taken without being sedated or incapacitated you were sure that she could. If she would listen to Owen, if she understood that both of you needed to leave, she’d understand what he needed her to do. What you weren’t expecting is what would greet you when you arrived. You hadn’t even had the chance to check the tracker and see where she was when Delta came running at you. It had taken you and Owen screaming at the team not to shoot her and you approaching Delta for everyone to calm down. You had tried to hope that Delta had survived too. It was risky and probably stupid and you weren’t sure what you were thinking when you wrapped your arms around her neck.

“Where’s Blue,” You asked Owen, releasing Delta and wiping the tears of relief from your eyes. She seemed impatient with you, like she’d been waiting and you still hadn’t done what she wanted.

“Looks like she’s out by the paddock.” Owen couldn’t tell you exactly where but he could guess what Blue was doing out there and if he told you he was sure you’d know what she was doing too.

“Why would she go there and leave Delta here? Delta!” You called as she ran from you, stopping a bit away and calling to you, tapping her claw impatiently against the ground. You had been considering that perhaps Blue left Delta to lead you to her but Delta wasn’t going in the right direction for the paddock she was leading you up the main path from the Innovation Center to the Lagoon. You weren’t sure what reason she had for leading you back down the destroyed path until you and Owen followed after her and you looked where she had stopped.

Owen didn’t understand why you froze at first until the memory from the night before came crashing in to him. Delta had led you both to Winston’s, led you to Echo. He’d been hoping to avoid this until after things were handled with Blue, to give you both a chance to be glad she was okay before having to face this again. He was sure you’d want to bury her like you’d insisted on doing with your old packs, there probably wasn’t enough left of Charlie to bury but Owen wasn’t sure he wanted either of you to see Echo like this. Last you’d seen of her she’d been thrown across the grill and on fire. Surely he could let the clean-up or containment team handle this and just have her buried. They owed Echo more than just leaving her to someone else, as if Delta would let them leave by the way she’d moved in to the restaurant and started screaming at them. You had started moving in to the restaurant before Owen even had the time to ask if you were up to it.

Delta’s reaction, the way she’d waited for your return and led you to the restaurant made blinding sense when you stepped inside. You could smell the burnt flesh as you approached what you thought was Echo’s corpse. The scream you let out when the burned body moved had both teams that were in the area running to the restaurant to see what had happened. Owen behind you was the only thing that kept your jump backwards from having you on the floor. It took a moment and a weak attempt at a call for it to sink in for you that Echo wasn’t dead. Delta had waited with her, waited for their alpha’s to come back for them. In the wild she might’ve left her sister for dead or killed her herself but in captivity she knew that if you and Owen came back you could help. Her calls as she stood next to Echo sounded utterly desperate and you found yourself sliding across the floor as you ran to her.

There wasn’t much of Echo’s body that hadn’t been burned by the flames of the grill. You tried not to grimace at the arm that Delta had presumably brought to feed her sister. Guilt wracked your body, while you had spent the night in a warm comfortable bed with Owen Echo had been lying there. Unpredictable Echo who always loved to have a go at anyone that got too close to the bars of the gate. Sweet Echo that tried to move to greet you, that rested her head on your lap when you sat on the ground next to her. You could feel the sobs shaking your body as you tried to muffle the noise with your hand.

“It’s okay Echo, I’m here. We’re gonna take care of you okay,” You cried to her. “Owen!”

“They’ve got a vet unit on its way” Owen offered as he knelt next to you. The presences of the vets on the island was more soothing to him before he got a good look at Echo. Both of you has always tried not to play favorites with the girl but everyone knew, Blue was his girl but Echo and Charlie were yours. The pragmatic part of himself considered that as badly burned as Echo was maybe it would be kinder to her to just put her out of her misery right here and not put her through even attempting treatment. He couldn’t tell you that, he couldn’t look you in the eyes while you held Echo’s head on your lap and tell you that maybe it wasn’t worth trying. Echo was a dinosaur for Christ sake, maybe they took to burns differently than a person, he owed it to you and her to at least get Echo to a vet.

Owen nearly had to drag you away from Echo when they arrived to retrieve her and Delta looked less than alright with letting anyone else near her sister. A stern warning had her running off, to the dismay of the containment team still standing by. A check of the trackers showed that it seemed like she was going to meet up with Blue so he could hope they stayed around that area until things were figured out with Echo. At the very least he could give the other team the okay to get Rexy handled while the girls were off doing their own thing. Unfortunately, the assessment from the vet wasn’t great news and Owen found himself forced to have that conversation with you.

“I can’t believe that you of all people are just giving up on her! How can you stand there and tell me that we should just let them put her down?!”

“I’m not saying we should I’m saying we need to consider it as an option. She’s in bad shape Y/N, I know you can see that. We don’t need to make her suffer, we don’t even know if they can save her.”

“That’s easy for you to say Owen! You still have Blue, you have Delta. Charlie and Echo were my girls and I had to lose both of them! They didn’t give up on us I can’t give up on them, I can’t give up on Echo when she got hurt trying to protect us! She could have given up, she could have helped that thing kill us. She fought to stay alive because she knew that we could help her, she deserves that chance!” He couldn’t possibly understand what this was doing to you. Last night you’d thought that you had watch three of the girls die and now you find out that Delta and Echo are alive but you have to choose whether you don’t even give Echo the chance to fight and live to save her the pain of doing so or put her through the pain and hope that the vets can fix her. Surely she deserved to at least have you try.

“This isn’t easy for me to say” He snapped at you. “Just because I’m closer to Blue doesn’t mean that I don’t fucking care about Echo too! You think I’m happy having to even consider this? You think I want to put her through this or have to decide to let her go? I just need you to understand that they might not be able to make her okay again Y/N and we need to be prepared for that chance.”

“I can’t give up on her Owen,” You muttered, trying to force away the tears that kept coming back. “It’s bad enough that we walked away while she was just lying there in pain, I can’t just let go of her without even trying to help her. She deserve better than that.”

“You know I’m not asking you to give up on her,” He returned softly, pulling you against him. “We’ll tell them to try, I just don’t know how much fight she’s got left.”

“This is Echo we’re talking about, all she does is fight,” You tried to laugh. You hoped that stayed true, that Echo kept being the fighter. You were starting to feel awful for getting so angry with Owen, you knew he was just trying to prepare you for the possibility of really losing Echo this time. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have any reason to apologize to me baby. I know this is putting a lot on you when you already thought you lost her. You know Claire won’t let them give our girl anything but the best.” By rights there wasn’t really any reason for the park to care about recapturing the raptors or about giving them medical care. They weren’t attractions, they were just a project that InGen put together and a dangerous one at that. But for the time being Claire was still Park Director and that raptor pack had played a big part in saving her and saving her nephews and one phone call to her assured Owen that the girls would be taken care of and not harmed. They may not be attractions but that was no reason to not give as much care to them as they would Rexy or any of the others.

“We should get Blue and Delta locked back up before they end up getting hurt.” Owen was right, of course he was, but it also brought to your mind the fact that there was nothing more you could do here. They had Echo sedated for the time being to make it easier on her and unless you and Owen said otherwise they were to do everything in their power to help her recover. Blue and Delta were still out there and there was no telling how long they’d stay put. They probably wouldn’t even take well to being shut back in the paddock while they knew that Echo was somewhere else but you couldn’t risk them hurting someone or tearing the park apart trying to find Echo. “Are they still at the paddock?”

“They weren’t at the paddock,” Owen admitted. He’d avoided telling you before Delta led you to Echo and now he had to put you through going out to where you lost Charlie. He knew it was inevitable, that eventually you’d have wanted to go there anyway, pay your respects and see if there was anything left of her to give a proper burial to. “They’re,” He started

“With Charlie.” He was too hesitant for them to be anywhere else. Blue had left Delta to lead you to Echo while she waited with what was left of their youngest sister. You had a hard time understanding why captivity had made them like this, had the waiting with remains, with a gravely injured sibling. In the wild surely they would have just made a meal of what remained and moved on as their instincts told them. “They’re waiting so we know where Charlie is.” There hadn’t been much time to really think about anything. Twenty-four hours ago you’d been celebrating a successful day with the girls but this morning you’d been faced with returning to island after a nightmarish incident to contain Blue with only the hope that Delta might’ve survived. What little other consideration you’d given was that you’d like to bury Echo at the very least, and that there was a good possibility that there wouldn’t be enough left of Charlie to bury. Every time you thought about Charlie you just thought about that look in her eyes before you were thrown back.

“Let’s go get the girls, we’ll have them follow with a truck and we’ll bring back Charlie.” He couldn’t bring himself to really say what they’d bring back, if anything. He was only half surprised that you said you were going to hang back once you’d gotten close. You’d gone through enough finding Echo, you didn’t need to see you baby girl in pieces. Delta had been quick to run to you but Blue waited. You could both hear her calling from farther ahead, as if you couldn’t find anything otherwise.

“Go get Blue, I can’t see what’s left of Charlie Owen, I can’t see her like that.” The small team that had come along seemed more than happy to wait in the enclosed vehicles, away from the raptors. Owen seemed less inclined to leave you but with a kiss to the top of your head he made his way through the trees to where Blue was waiting for him.

The sight of a tail sticking out of the grass next to where Blue was standing had Owen feeling a bit sick to his stomach. It was better that you’d stayed back, he wasn’t sure if it would have been worse to have just found small pieces. Finding such a large piece of Charlie was unexpected but not as unexpected as what he discovered when he stepped in to the grass.

“I know Blue, we’ll take her back and…Y/N!” You didn’t expect to hear Owen yelling for you, not when he knew that you couldn’t bear seeing what might be there and when he was fully capable of handling Blue. “Y/N! Get them in here with the truck!” Your gut reaction kicked in, after gesturing for them to get to where Owen was you ran for him.

“Blue!” That was your best assumption, you’d both figured Blue was just waiting for you to come collect Charlie and lead them back to the paddock, but the last time either of you had seen her was after the fight and for all you knew she might’ve had another run in with Rexy and hadn’t moved because she couldn’t. Blue however was just standing there staring at you like you were out of your mind. That was when you noticed that the vocalizations you were hearing weren’t coming from Blue, and there was a moving tail coming out of the grass. “Charlie!”

“Get in here and calm her down!” You were next to them before he’d even finished the sentence. “She keeps trying to get up,” He added, nodding down towards her leg. Through patches of burned skin you could see that her leg was broken. How she’d managed to escape being blown to pieces you couldn’t be sure but she was largely okay and if the remains were anything to go by, Blue had brought her food like Delta had for Echo.

“Easy Charlie, I’m here. I came back for you beautiful girl. We’ll get you good as new, have you back to chasing pigs and terrorizing interns in no time.” Despite the minor burns and broken limb, Charlie was in no great hurry to sit still for you, knocking both of you over as she hoped to her feet before balancing on the one leg. “Jesus Charlie,” You scolded, trying to stand on the weak side to keep her standing up. 

“Still your little miracle raptor,” Owen laughed, helping you support Charlie as she insisted on hopping her way out of the grass to the chagrin of the team that had come in with the truck. “You going with them or are you coming with me to take the other two back to the paddock?”

“I think I should go with her, I don’t know how she’ll take being by herself and having people prodding at her.” Part of you did want to go back to the paddock with Owen, get the girls settled. You were ecstatic to find out that Charlie was alive and not in as bad of shape as Echo was, but she still needed to be taken to the vet to be check out and treated. She could still have other injuries that you couldn’t see and it was better for her to have you or Owen there so she knew that she was still safe.

“I’ll be back out for you once they’re settled in and fed, I’ll try not to be too long.” Blue and Delta would be alright on their own long enough for him to get back to the medical center and check on how Charlie and Echo were doing. Whether or not you’d be willing to leave and go home would be up in the air but if need be he could go back and let you stay to keep an eye on the girls.

The thought did cross your mind to spend the night with your girls, find somewhere to crash in the medical center and be there to keep an eye on them. Charlie would be okay to go back to the paddock in no time, her burns were minor and luckily nothing was broken but her leg but the leg would need time to heal and it would be a while before she’d be able to hunt with her sisters. Echo was another story, as much as you could’ve hoped for another miracle like finding Charlie, Echo’s condition hadn’t changed. If she survived she’d be badly scarred, quite possibly blind and they weren’t sure how being so badly burned might’ve affected her ears or her sense of smell. If she lived you would have to spend the rest of your life taking care of her because there was a good chance she wouldn’t be able to do it herself.

That was the first time you really considered if you were doing Echo any favors by keeping her alive. Sure it was one thing for her suffer if she ended up dying anyway but the other option seemed worse now. You had never thought the doctor’s had some miracle drug they’d give Echo and she’d be back and good as new. You knew there would be scarring but you didn’t consider just how badly she may be injured. Was it fair to make her suffer like this, to have her in the pain she must be in for her final recovery to leave her blind, without her senses, god only knows what sort of muscle damage. Was it fair to have her live so she had be reliant on you and Owen for the rest of her life? This was an animal that was made to run, made to hunt and she might never be able to do that again.

“Am I doing the right thing?” You asked softly when you saw Owen approaching. You weren’t allowed in the room with Echo, with her burns as severe as they were, any outside contamination would further risk infection. You hadn’t moved from the glass separating you from the room since you’d finished making sure that Charlie was set.

“You’re giving her a chance, I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“A chance at what though Owen? A chance at being crippled for the rest of her life, a chance at having to completely rely on us for the rest of her life? I thought we were so lucky, we survived, by some miracle the girls survived but I’m not stupid enough to think that she’s really going to come out of this even close to how she was.”

“Of course she isn’t, burns don’t just heal in to fresh skin and we can’t guarantee that she will be okay. We don’t know how they messed with that they made the girls out of but I think we both know that she probably shouldn’t have survived even being burned like that. They don’t know how she’ll heal any better than we do, they’re just making their best guess.”

"I don't know what to do anymore, I thought I was so sure that we should at least give her the chance to live, but the thought of her never being able to be a raptor again.”

“I know you’ve never been very good at it, but try and have some faith in her. Hope for the best. She’s always been strong baby, she hatched when everyone else thought she wouldn’t make it, she survived fighting with Blue and she’ll survive this but she need you to have her back this time and believe she can do it. Think you can do that for her?”

“I can try.”

“Good. How’s Charlie?”

“She’s okay, nothing messed up but what we could see but it’s her leg so it’ll take a bit to heal, once it is we can have her back. They’re concerned that she won’t be able to heal properly at the paddock with Blue and Delta around.”

“They’re probably not wrong. No big deal, we’ve got all the time in the world now. No more deadlines to meet, no more Hoskins breathing down our neck about turning in reports. And now you’re laughing.”

“She brought Echo his arm! Delta brought Hoskins’ arm to Echo for food and it is just so fucking ironic and poetic and beautiful.”

“Probably would’ve made them all sick, don’t want them eating that.”

“Too fatty, only the best for our girls.”

“Feels like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you smile.”

“I can’t wrap my head around it. It’s barely been a day but it feels like it’s been so long.”

“Doesn’t help that we haven’t slept very much.”

“We can try to make up for it tonight, but unless we get people to come back to the paddock we’re going to be up for some incredibly long days.”

The attempt to catch up on the sleep you’d failed to get the night before was largely a failure. A knock on the bungalow door brought containment with news that Delta and Blue were throwing an absolute fit. You both woke up the next morning covered in chunks of wood and sore from falling asleep in the cage to calm the girls down. It was the same issue any time you left the paddock for any period of time. They seemed to understand when you went to visit Charlie and Echo but if you went home they started acting up. It reached the point that the two of you had to break out the old cot from when they were still little and bunk in the cage so they’d stay calm at night. After a while you couldn’t make yourself keep standing in front of the glass staring at Echo. You’d record your voice for them to play for her so she knew you were still looking out for her but you couldn’t keep torturing yourself over her.

Charlie made a full recovery as expected, though they sent her back to the paddock earlier than planned because as soon as Charlie felt like she was up to it she was trying to find a way to escape. Better to have her hobbling around the enclosure than trying to escape in the middle of the park. Apparently they thought a loose raptor might slow down getting everything rebuilt, go figure. With Charlie that would’ve been accurate, injured or not she would’ve been tearing things up and climbing up scaffolding, it would’ve been a mess. Blue and Delta did a good enough job calming her down once you and Owen brought her back to the paddock, but it was still a nightly game of having to sleep at the paddock

Once you couldn’t bring yourself to stay up to the minute on Echo’s condition, Owen took over for you like he was sure you would do for him if it were Blue so horribly injured. As you asked he told you only that she was still healing and that of course he delivered your little recordings, occasionally pass on word that Echo seemed to very much like hearing you voice. It was a little bit less of a worry, if she could hear the recordings that meant that the burns hadn’t deafened her. Owen let you keep busy with the other three and with such minimal staffing the two of you were always busy. It was a catch-22, it was easier to work more relaxed and breathe without the cluster of InGen people there, but with even many of the regular park employees that hadn’t come back yet it was a bit harder at the same time. 

You were always sure to get the essentials done. The girls got fed, Delta and Blue got free run of the course and when Charlie came back she got a more limited level of exercise so she didn’t reinjure herself. It was a great day to be able to let her run free with her sisters again. Then there were the reports, not so much progress on training as they used to be but progress on their recovery. Delta had a mild limp probably from when she was thrown, and then Charlie’s injuries. They had to recover as a pack and without Echo it was still a ways off.

You didn’t pay much mind when you heard a vehicle pull up, assuming it was Owen coming back from checking up on Echo. Your attention was yet again on the girls, or at least the monitors so you knew they weren’t out on the course getting in to trouble. You were almost ashamed to admit how lax security was at the paddock now. Blame it on now having the various InGen and park containment teams on site at all times or maybe just on knowing that a boundary had been established with the girls. They had proven something important to you and to Owen the first day back, in the right conditions they were fully capable of existing without such oppressive observation, in fact they were flourishing. You’d already assumed it was Owen arriving back but the girls suddenly running back for the main paddock just confirmed it. Except that he wasn’t in the jeep he’d left in.

“What are you doing with that? Do they need one of the girls for a checkup?” Surely he would’ve given you a heads up if that was the case. Now they were all wound up and they weren’t going to get in the MVU easily.

“I know you wanted left out of the loop about Echo, but they’ve done all they can for her at this point,” Owen responded, moving around to the back door. For a moment your heart dropped to the ground before you heard movement inside. “So you’re gonna have to suck it up now,” He added, opening the doors. “Ah ah, close your eyes.”

“Seriously Owen.” You muttered, turning around instead.

“You know how the girls are, let her get out first,” He laughed, making sure you weren’t peaking before operating the platform to move out of the vehicle so he didn’t have to get Echo down the gap. Given that he hadn’t let them sedate her for the ride, she’d been surprisingly calm about it, at least until she realized she was back home, and back with her favorite alpha. “Turn around baby.” 

You weren’t sure you were up to this, the months that you’d been back, the months you spent hoping you made the right decision and hadn’t condemned Echo to a life of needing constant care. You had missed having her there so much and seeing her instead of relying on word of mouth to know how she was doing. Echo however, was just as impatient as her sisters were and she let you know she was tired of waiting for you to look at her with a huff of air on the back of your neck. The site of her made you speechless. She’d come so far from how you’d found her, the burned skin making way for new skin and scar tissue but even that couldn’t hide her scar and crooked jaw from that fight with Blue. But there she stood, standing in front of you just find on her own two legs, watching the way your face lit up to see her.

“Just look at how beautiful you are Echo. Oh jeez,” You laughed when she butted her head against your chest.

“I don’t think she likes you crying very much.”

“Well too bad for her because I’m too happy to have her back to not cry,” You shot back, wrapping your arms around Echo. “How is she?”

“I told you to hope for the best didn’t I? Any bit of muscle damage she had has fixed itself by now, she just has to work herself back up like Charlie did. She not deaf, smells just fine, she’s just got some vision loss in her right eye that was the side she landed on when she hit the grill top. Nothing that’ll keep her from living a good life. You made the right call Y/N.”

“I wasn’t the only one that made that call Owen, we both decided to take a chance on her.”

“You were behind it more than I was. There’s one more little thing though, untie what’s around her neck,” He responded “Figured I’d wait for a really great day but our last really great day got wrecked so I think this might qualify.”

“This, definitely qualifies as really great,” You assured, struggling to untie the string around Echo’s neck while she kept moving. “There we go,” You laughed, trying not to drop whatever was weighing down the string but managing to do so anyway. “That’s what happens when you put something on a stupid long string!”

“Had to be long enough to go around her neck, thought you might appreciate the gesture,” He responded, crouching down to grab whatever it was you dropped

“Not sure why I would…oh?”

“Yeah. So, before your wonderful raptor knocks me over. Will you marry me?”

“Making me cry again!” You laughed, nodding your head. “Of course I will.” You added, all but jumping in to his arms.

“Someone is not happy with us,” Owen laughed, pulling his lips away from yours when Echo hissed at the two of you.

“I think she’s jealous,” You laughed back.

“We’ll compromise with her, I have to take the truck back and get the jeep so you spend some time with Echo and we’ll pick up when I get back.”

“Mm, deal. You think now that we’ve got Echo back we might be able to go home, to our bed?”

“No harm in trying,” Owen laughed before kissing you again. “I’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll be here,” You responded, watching him drive off before turning back to Echo and the girls waiting for you both in the paddock. “I’ll definitely be here.”


End file.
